No decision on wastewater design contract termination

In updating the Richmond Hill City Council on measures underway to terminate the contract entered into between the city and H+K Engineering Group for the creation of plans for upgrading and expansion and the city’s Sterling Creek Wastewater Treatment facility City Attorney Ray Smith stated that while reviewing documents submitted by H+K’s attorney he and Mayor Harold Fowler had become concerned with the degree of completion of those plans and what had been done.

“We (also) became somewhat concerned with certain steps that had been taken and why they had been taken,” Smith said. “Tonight ... the mayor has delivered to me a series of documents that are supposed to shed light on this. Hopefully that will shed sufficient light that either the mayor and I, or perhaps the mayor, or perhaps me will be able to meet with our current engineers and get their ideas from a professional standpoint because I really can’t look at an engineering job and tell how much should or shouldn’t be done.”

The desire for terminating the contract Fowler said comes in part as a result of Georgia EPD not being happy with designs proposed by H+K.

“About two years ago H+K came up with a design that EPD said they would not accept at all, then they came with the design they are working on now and still EPD was not happy with it,” Fowler said. “We just feel that since H&K has come up with two designs and EPD has not been happy with either one, maybe we need to go in a different direction.”

However H+K Senior Engineer and Principal Ron Kolat says the EPD was not critical of their plans.

“It is true that we submitted a revised (second) design to the EPD at the preliminary stages of the design process. However, the revised design was not a result of the EPD rejecting the first design. The revised design was a result of a meeting held on Feb. 8, 2010 between us, the city and the EPD,” he said.

Kolat adds that the EPD was never given an opportunity to perform a full review of H+K’s second design as the city requested that the EPD terminate their review on Feb 2, 2012.

Meanwhile Curtis Boswell, an environmental engineer with the DNR, of which the EPD is part of, explains it this way.

“The first design (submitted by H+K) they looked at was, I am going to say, old technology. However there was a physical change in limitations that were placed on the city after they originally proposed that design. So that design would not have worked for them,” Boswell said. “The plans would not have worked because the parameters they were working under changed.”

H+K’s second submittal was a design Boswell said he had never seen before.

“It was something I was not familiar with because it was very, very different. It wasn’t in the mainstream,” he said. “I have been with the state 34 years and I have never seen one (like it) before. I was just having to be brought up to speed on it.

“It was a modification of the existing system. What I did was I sent them comments early, kind of out of sequence, and then I had to get caught up with my other stuff before I could finish what I was doing. So it appeared that we were sitting on it for a little while.”

Boswell said the DNR really doesn’t have a preference of the type of system a city chooses but is more comfortable with some than others.

“I don’t think we have the option to like or prefer anything,” he said. “However, I told the mayor that in moving to something we have seen a lot more of and are sure how it works, I would support him in getting an extension, as long as they are moving forward so we can get compliance taken care of.”

Currently the city is well into the 30-month time period allotted by the EPD for the upgrades and expansion that will bring the Sterling Creek facility, which is operating at, or near, capacity; and has been subjected to fines dating back as far as 2008 for discharges exceeding permitted levels, into compliance.

“The biggest thing is that anytime the mayor and the council are so involved in their wastewater treatment plant is something EPD appreciates,” Boswell added. “And, it looks like they are moving forward and are on the right track.”

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It sounds to me like Fowler got caught in his lie about why the city is wasting money to hire a new engineer to redo work that has already been done. The city has already spent over $600,000 on the current design. But Fowler wants to hire a new engineer because of politics.